The Dream Weavers Page 44

  He pushed the phone towards her but she shook her head. ‘You know I can’t read Anglo-Saxon. Tell me.’

  ‘It seems to confirm she died in Pavia. The chronicler echoes, or prefigures, the disgust at her behaviour that we see in Asser. But then he adds something. Look.’ He scrolled the screen and enlarged it. ‘Some say her lover was a Welshman. He uses the word, just like that. And that’s interesting because Asser calls him a man from her own country, and he would know Eadburh was Mercian. On the other hand, Asser himself was Welsh and he may not have wanted to admit her lover was a fellow Welshman. Anyway, our chronicler here goes on to say, and Charlemagne spared his life,’ he glanced up, ‘because, he said, no mortal man could avoid her …’ he hesitated, frowning. ‘This word is wiles, I think. No mortal man could avoid her wiles. The next bit is hard to read in every sense: He ordered that the man be castrated then he turned him out into the snow to live or die according to the will of God.’

  Bea sat down abruptly. ‘Oh no.’

  Simon slipped the phone back into his pocket and sat down facing her. ‘It’s a nasty outcome. A touch of Heloise and Abelard.’

  ‘You mustn’t tell Emma.’

  ‘No. But what if she dreams it?’

  ‘We must hope she doesn’t. If Eadburh never learnt the truth, if that is the truth, then we can only be happy for her that she had some more time with him before it ended so badly.’ She sighed. ‘Actually, I know some of this, Simon. I’ve had more dreams since I saw you. I meant to try to stop myself, like Emma, but it’s hard to stop wanting to know what happened.’ She gave him a quick look and was relieved to see he appeared interested rather than sceptical. ‘I dreamed her lover was Elisedd, but it’s good to have it confirmed. Eadburh thinks, thought, he was killed after they dragged him from her bed. She was thrown out into the snow and escaped with a slave girl called Cwen and Ava, the dog Charlemagne gave her.’

  He laughed. ‘How I wish I could use this stuff in my book. So, how did she reach Pavia?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You haven’t got there yet?’

  She smiled. ‘I’m trying to resist, but the story is frighteningly compelling.’

  He stood up. ‘I suppose I must get back to my own story. The politics of Mercia seems very dull without Offa and his family.’

  ‘So who became king after Offa’s son?’

  ‘A chap called Coenwulf. A descendant of one of the great King Penda’s brothers, so, I suppose, Offa’s distant cousin.’

  ‘And how would he have regarded Eadburh?’

  ‘With horror, I should imagine. I think we can probably assume she would not have been welcomed back to Mercia even if she had survived, and she would not have dared to go back to Wessex, so where could she have gone? Perhaps that’s where Pavia comes in. She had no reason to go back to Britain.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she have looked for her daughter?’

  ‘I have tried to look the daughter up. There is no mention of what happened to her as far as I can see. I think we must hope that the best outcome for her, if she ever existed, would have been in a happy convent as a happy nun.’

  Bea made a face. ‘You’re probably right. What a sad time.’

  ‘To them, God was real. He would have been there for them at the end.’

  ‘But he’s not real for you?’

  ‘Ah. Sorry. I forgot I was talking to a clergy wife who lives within spitting distance of a cathedral.’

  ‘What an unfortunate choice of words!’ She grinned.

  He put his hands together and bowed. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘Keep me in the loop, Simon, please. I care greatly about Emma. I haven’t tried to contact her. I really think it’s better if I keep my distance for now, but I’m there if she needs me.’

  ‘Oh my goodness, that reminds me!’ He turned back from the door, reaching into his pocket. ‘Another reason for coming to see you. Emma asked me to give you this before she left.’ It was a small envelope. Inside was Bea’s cross. ‘She said to tell you she thought you might need it more than she does now she’s back in London. If she does need one, she’ll buy one herself.’

  After he had gone she closed the door with an unexpected pang of loss. Their parting seemed almost final. She looked down at the cross in her hand and sighed.

  *

  Simon was cursing himself as he drove away from Hereford. How could he have handled that conversation worse? He wanted to stay in touch with Bea. He wanted to know she was there at the end of the phone, that she would come if he needed her.

  He walked up to the cottage and stood on the terrace looking into the distance. The afternoon had turned hazy; the sheep had fallen silent and for once there were no great birds circling in the sky. It was as if time was standing still.

  And then he heard it, in the distance. The voice calling.

  Elise.

  Elisedd.

  43

  Cwen carried a knife in her belt and flint and steel in her pouch, and she found them shelter in a cave out of the wind and rain where they made beds of dead leaves. Ava seemed to know they needed game. After feeding herself, she caught them rabbits and hares and even a squirrel. Cwen cooked them over the fire, scraping the skins clean and saving them. As the season turned they ate the young leaves of hawthorn and gathered herbs to make into potage, improvising a cooking dish from a hollow stone. Eadburh was very ill at the beginning and they both thought she would die; but she improved and slowly grew stronger as she became accustomed to the hard way of life.

  And they talked.

  ‘Where was your home, Cwen?’

  ‘My mother was captured by the king’s armies when I was a child.’ The girl had startlingly blue eyes and a ragged lock of blond hair that escaped routinely from her head-rag to trail across her face.

  ‘And your mother is a slave at the abbey?’ Eadburh reached forward to brush the hair out of the girl’s eyes.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since I was brought there to work in the kitchens.’

  Eadburh saw the wistful sadness in the girl’s face; until now, she’d never thought of her as a person, merely a servant. Cwen had saved her life, there was no doubt about that. The girl was resourceful and loyal and could read the countryside round them, finding food and following the stars. At first they headed north, anywhere to put more distance between them and the convent, but it was up to Eadburh now to decide where they should go. One thing was sure, they had to leave the territories of the emperor. She had no way of knowing how far they extended or what lay ahead of them. All they knew was that there was a long, long journey ahead.

  There was a choice to be made. If they made their way towards the west she would be in Charles’s territories until she reached the coast of the Northern Sea where she could try to find a boat to take them across to Kent or East Anglia or even Northumbria. She allowed herself a brief moment of hope. In either of the latter two kingdoms she might find herself near one of her sisters, if they still lived. Kent was the most dangerous. There she would be among allies of Wessex who might still be her enemies. Supposing, having reached the shores of Britannia, she headed back overland towards Mercia? But she was not wanted there, and her dream of the mountains of Powys was gone. There was no one there for her now. Her beloved, the hero of her dreams, was dead. As long as she didn’t allow herself to think about Elisedd, didn’t dwell on those few treasured hours beneath her blankets, didn’t let herself remember that by coming to find her, his only love, Elisedd had lost his life, she could carry on, if not for her own sake then for the sake of this girl at her side.

  With renewed bitter resolve she looked up at the sun. Every step westward would remind her of Elisedd and the journey he had made to find her. The other choice was to walk east, towards countries she did not know, to places she had never heard of, until they came to the empire’s end.

  ‘The sisters of Wyrd have decided for us.’ She smiled at Cwen. ‘We will head for the rising sun.’

  Each ti
me they heard travellers on the road below them in the valley, Cwen went down alone and made the decision from the safety of her hiding place in the trees as to whether or not they would prove generous to a beggar girl in rags. On the whole she chose well and they were kind. As the weather grew slowly warmer so the meagre pile of possessions they amassed in their bundles grew. She came back with food and old shoes, shawls and a torn but blessedly clean shift, once a small cooking pot complete with stew to reheat over their fire; and best of all she gathered information. As far as she knew, she reported back, no one was looking for them now. She and the mother abbess had joined the legions of nameless outlaws and beggars who roamed the country without home or master.

  Slowly they moved on, avoiding towns and villages. Eadburh didn’t know where she was going or what she wanted. Life went on as they lived hand to mouth, both glad each evening that they had managed to survive another day.

  Then as summer tipped over into autumn, Cwen came back to Eadburh with news. ‘There is a group of pilgrims on the road, men and women of God. They say we can join them. I told them we had been robbed and lost everything and they said we could become part of their number. I came to fetch you.’

  After that, life was much better. They shared food and companionship and lodgings with men and women on the pilgrim road, heading for Rome, aiming to cross the high pass over the Alps into Lombardy before the early snows came. Each one had their story, the reason they had embarked on a pilgrimage and each night they regaled one another with tales of regret and penance and promises broken or kept. Cwen told of the loss of her mother and the hardship she had endured until a convent took her in. She was on pilgrimage, she said, to thank God for saving her life. Eadburh told something approaching the truth. She had been, inadvertently, the cause of her husband’s death and lived in permanent regret and sorrow at his loss. The dog had been, she said, a gift from the man who wanted her to be his wife, but she had refused, knowing she did not deserve happiness. Instead, she said, she had resolved to beg forgiveness at the shrine of St Peter for what she had done.

  The group joined other pilgrim bands and then split off again as people elected to follow different routes; it lost some members as they dropped by the wayside, others decided to stay longer at one place or another. As each new face appeared, Eadburh shrank back and drew her hood across her face in case she was recognised, but there was never any glimmer of recognition and gradually she grew less afraid.

  Then, as the pilgrims rested for several days at an abbey guest house in the gentle foothills of a river valley, lined with vineyards, came her first shock. Cwen came to her and with tears in her eyes begged for release. ‘I want to stay here. I feel at home here and the novice mistress said I could take the veil.’ She looked pleadingly at Eadburh, who was astonished at the devastation she felt. She and Cwen had grown close over the long months of their journey and somehow she had envisaged them being together forever, but, in a strange moment of altruism such as she had never experienced before, she found she couldn’t bring herself to refuse. The girl had stayed with her of her own free will, had served her faithfully, saved her life on numerous occasions, and for once she felt the need to be kind, to put someone else first. And besides, she still had her faithful Ava, plodding beside her mile after mile on the long roads south.

  Autumn drew on and the pilgrims’ pace increased. Snow comes early to the high Alpine passes and more and more often they were warned that they should hurry if they wanted to cross the great mountains before winter set in. Their route took them past Besançon, then on south, towards Pontarlier, around the great lake Lemmanus to Vevey then along the old Roman Road over the pass beneath Mont Blanc. Now in early autumn it was bitterly cold at night and they huddled together for warmth as they reached each pilgrim halt on the route, following the trail through the southern foothills of the Alps towards Vercelli on the Lombardy Plain where it was still warm and bountiful autumn.

  It was when they reached the town of Pavia that, in her loneliness, Eadburh confided in the abbess of the convent to which the hostelry was attached, claiming once more in half-truths and elaborate inventions and evasions that she would be going back to find her sister in East Anglia once she had completed her pilgrimage to the shrines of St Peter and St Paul. She had acquired a slave boy now, Theoderic, who carried her bundle and her scrip and cloak and groomed Ava, whom he adored. She finally began to feel safe, despite the horrifying discovery that, for all the great distance they had travelled, she was still within the empire of Charlemagne, who was amongst his many titles, King of the Lombards. Thankfully, he ruled through others; no one in Pavia could possibly know of her existence. She moved into more gracious accommodation, thanks to the abbess, and wore richer clothes, gifts from the generosity of the abbey treasure chests, and at last dared to allow herself to enjoy life a little. When she dreamed of Elisedd it was to wake with tears in her eyes, but tears could not touch her heart. That had been sealed away with some deep inner core of her soul, together with the memories of their nights of love in the privacy of the abbess’s rooms in a Frankish convent, and the horror of their violent parting. Sealed there too were her dreams of the misty hills of the Welsh kingdom he would never see again and the wasted, empty years in Wessex when she could have been at his side in Powys.

  The day of Emma’s first exam, the school rang Val to ask if Emma was ill. ‘She’s not here. I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid she’s missed her first English paper.’

  The headmistress had seen it all before. ‘Nerves,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be too anxious. She can resit.’

  Neither Felix nor Simon had any idea where she was. For the last few days she had seemed to be working hard, had made no complaint and, Simon assured Val, had not been in touch with him. He rang Bea at once, guessing Emma would have been heading for Hereford, but she had heard nothing either.

  When Emma had not returned by that evening, Val rang the police.

  Had Sandra managed to worm her way into Emma’s head? Bea sat thinking hard after Simon’s frantic call. Or was it Eadburh? Always Eadburh. Had Emma remembered to protect herself or had she allowed her dreams back in? Cautiously, carefully, she put out feelers, trying to find some trace of the girl out there, but there was nothing. All she could do was try to protect Emma from afar, surround her with light and send prayers.

  Eadburh had been seen in Pavia. That much Bea knew from Asser. But she didn’t know by whom she had been seen or what had happened next. Perhaps now, in search of Emma, she had more reason than ever to follow the story on from there. It was with a feeling of sick dread that she made her way upstairs to the attic and picked up her stone.

  It had been bad luck beyond measure. After all the time Eadburh had spent in Pavia as the friend and protégée of the abbess, one day in late spring the following year, as she walked towards the river with Theo in attendance, she was seen by a party of pilgrims heading towards the bridge on their way to Rome. Their party had originated in Winchester and two amongst them had spent time at the court of Beorhtric and seen his queen. One of them was a woman who had moved on to work as a maid in the abbey in Frankia. Her look of incredulity, followed by a shout of recognition and then her jeers of mockery and disgust, were eagerly taken up by the mob. People did not bother to ask questions; they threw stones, they swore at Eadburh and spat, they cornered her and tore at her clothes until she feared for her life.

  As her dream darkened and faded and Bea began to wake she saw, for one confused instant, the figure of Sandra Bedford standing on the covered bridge over the River Ticino. She was at the forefront of the mob, a stone in her hand, a look of smug enjoyment on her face. As Bea watched she hurled the stone towards Eadburh, then stood back, leaning with her elbow on the balustrade to watch the fun. It was a moment later that, slowly, as though feeling Bea’s horrified gaze, she looked round and the women eyed one another in astonished recognition.

  *

  Bea opened her eyes and looked round frantically. Her heart wa
s pounding with fright. She scrambled to her feet, visualising herself surrounded by light, alone, calm, quiet and she reached for her cross, once more back around her neck. ‘Christ be with me, Christ within me …’ She had seen Sandra, on a bridge in the centre of Pavia. How she knew it was Pavia she wasn’t sure, she had never to her knowledge been there, but that was where Sandra had been standing.

  Running downstairs, Bea found her iPad. It took only seconds to find the place. The Ponte Coperto, in the centre of the historic city, on the road from Pavia to Genoa, a bridge built on Roman foundations. She took a deep breath. This wasn’t someone who occasionally dabbled in crystals and Tarot cards. This was a woman who could worm her way inside other people’s minds. And if she could attack Bea like this, she would be more than capable of finding her way into Emma’s head.

  What would Meryn do? Filled with resolve, Bea wrapped up her stone and went over to her jars of dried herbs. He had told her she was strong enough to cope with this. She didn’t know where Emma was, but she could deal with Sandra. And she would start by cleansing the house.

  The smoke of ancient incense, rowan and juniper, mugwort, vervain, nettle, chamomile and lavender circled gently up to the highest corners of the ceilings, cleansing, raising the vibrations so no lower entities could thrive – and Sandra was possessed by a lower entity if ever there was one.

  She knew Mark would wrinkle his nose when he came in – saining was a step too far in his book, nearer to magic than some of the other things she did – but sometimes the old ways were best. In any case, the Church still used frankincense. Not Mark perhaps, but some High Church clergy did, and she always thought how lovely it was, a nod to ancient beliefs, cleansing, carrying prayer up to heaven on its fragrant, protective smoke.

  The house felt cleansed and safe after she had carried her little bowl of smoking herbs – and, yes, she had added a grain or two of frankincense – round every room. She had a shower, then walked across the Close to the cathedral to pray. Her chantry priest wasn’t there, but she sensed he was listening. Like Meryn, he expected her to be strong.